


you can break me too

by emso



Series: the ultraviolet catastrophe [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Canon Compliant, Casual Sex, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love, implied kagehina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:13:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27303949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emso/pseuds/emso
Summary: “Do you want me to help you get over it?”There’s movement in the corner of his eye, the barely discernible turn of Atsumu’s head against the sofa to look at him. Kiyoomi doesn’t move; doesn’t even breathe. All at once his pulse is screaming in his ears.“…Omi,” says Atsumu, very softly.Miya Atsumu is simply too easy to love.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: the ultraviolet catastrophe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993675
Comments: 70
Kudos: 557
Collections: Haikyuu Angst Week 2020





	you can break me too

**Author's Note:**

> **haikyuu angst week 2020**  
>  ☞ day 1, tier 2: _unrequited love_
> 
> ⚠️ cw // (legal & moderate) alcohol consumption
> 
> thank you as always to guardian angel [eska](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eskarina/pseuds/Eskarina) for first read-through and some extremely entertaining google doc comments.
> 
> thank you also to my wonderful new beta [kaylee](https://twitter.com/yaejinie). i am so grateful that you offered, bc i never would've asked, but your thoughts are just invaluable.
> 
> ( title from 'let me follow' by son lux )

Kiyoomi sees this coming: he sees it all coming from a mile away.

Hinata’s long-harboured feelings for Kageyama Tobio, finally bubbling over one otherwise completely ordinary Tuesday evening. The rest of the Jackals dissolving into peals of laughter in the changerooms as he all but yells his confession down the phone, crimson up to his hairline, the words tripping over one another. Kageyama’s staticky, illegible noises of shock, borne of his almost unbelievable obliviousness; the garbled _um, me too_ that makes its way through the tangle anyway.

The frozen smile on Miya Atsumu’s face as he stands against his locker and doesn’t say a word. His disappearing act to the bathroom with his mobile no doubt speed dialling his brother before he’s even out the door. And the message that lights up Kiyoomi’s own phone not fifteen minutes later as he’s loading his things into his car to go home: _oi, feel like drinking together tn?_

He sees each step of this coming. And yet, somehow, in the face of it, he still finds himself utterly defenceless – the way Atsumu hurtles through his barricades, every single time.

“Should we pick up somethin’ on the way?” Atsumu says, as he ducks into front seat and pulls his duffel bag into his lap.

Kiyoomi waits for him to do up his seatbelt. “I have drinks at home.”

That earns him the barest twist of a grin, flashed at him in a slant, mostly genuine – on the balance of things. “Always one step ahead. Gotta love that about you, Omi.”

His hands tighten on the steering wheel; the beginnings of something like motion sickness swim in his gut. He backs the car out of the parking spot, cagey, glancing over his shoulder as quickly as he can so he doesn’t have to look at Atsumu a moment longer than necessary.

“It’s called ‘being prepared’, Miya.” Driving with him so close always feels slightly dangerous, but something about it is a touch more acute tonight. He keeps his voice carefully flat. “You might like to try it sometime.”

+

“Omi. Did you know?”

Kiyoomi slowly lifts his glass to his lips. Delays having to answer. Doesn’t answer anyway: “Know what?”

He feels Atsumu throw him a look, but apparently for once he doesn’t have it in him to pick a fight – not right now. “That he was being serious the whole time. Whenever he talked about Tobio.”

“Why wouldn’t he be serious?”

“ _Because_.” Atsumu puts his drink down on the floor beside him and drops his head back onto the sofa with a gloomy huff. “They never even get to _see_ each other these days.”

“That’s… not actually true, I think,” says Kiyoomi, because it isn’t, and _surely_ Atsumu knows it isn’t. “They spend a lot of their free time together. Between training.” More accurately: they have a shared Google calendar with both of their training schedules, and any intersecting hours of vacancy marked in all-caps and bright orange. If it were _anyone_ but Hinata and Kageyama, their total mutual unawareness would have been scarcely credible.

(And yet. Here, it seems, is another.)

Atsumu huffs again. Then he picks up his glass, drains it, and wordlessly tilts it towards Kiyoomi – the ice inside has barely even started to melt.

“Is that what makes you ‘serious’ about him, then?” Kiyoomi unscrews the whiskey and pours him a tad less this time. “The fact that you see him all the time?”

“Yeah. No.” Atsumu’s still staring up at the ceiling. “I dunno.”

How is he supposed to respond to that? Normally this would be the point at which Kiyoomi would snark him, but that seems kind of mean today, and – he wants to be at least a vaguely decent friend, if nothing else. “Well, it’s difficult to articulate that sort of thing. I suppose you don’t _have_ to know.” And then, after a moment’s deliberation, “…Are you… alright?”

Uncharacteristically, Atsumu lets the question drift in the air for several seconds, as though he’s actually _thinking_ about it. When he eventually speaks his voice is a little forlorn – like a child who’s maybe been refused seconds for dessert, nothing more and nothing less. “Yeah, I will be. I wasn’t – in love with him or anything. I think. Not yet, anyway.”

_Not yet._

It’s so like him to throw that word around, again and again. Because it seeps out of his every nook and cranny – fills in all of his spaces – animates him, colours his voice, illuminates his eyes: _love_. God. It’s overwhelming. It’s so, so overwhelming to sit this close to him and be utterly stifled by it.

Kiyoomi’s stomach churns, like it always does. But today, the warm glow of whiskey and his floor lamp briefly dulls its ragged edges, for just long enough that he slips up and ignores its chronic warning.

Which is perhaps why he then hears himself say, “Do you want me to help you get over it?”

There’s movement in the corner of his eye, the barely discernible turn of Atsumu’s head against the sofa to look at him. Kiyoomi doesn’t move; doesn’t even breathe. All at once his pulse is screaming in his ears.

“…Omi,” says Atsumu, very softly.

“Don’t make it into a thing,” Kiyoomi bites out. His face is – burning. “It’s not a thing. I was offering just in case. If you’re not interested—”

“No, no, it’s not,” and Atsumu actually _hesitates_ , the second time he’s done that in the past five minutes, which is twice more than Kiyoomi thought he’d witness in a lifetime, “that I’m not interested. I just – well. I’m…”

 _Don’t ask me why don’t ask me why don’t ask me why don’t ask me_ —

“…surprised,” Atsumu finishes. “Didn’t take you for the type.”

“What type?” Finally, _finally_ , Kiyoomi works up the courage to face him – and very nearly looks away at once. Atsumu’s eyes are far too bright for the dim watery light dousing the room, completely fixed on him, searching for something. He forces himself to add, “The type to have casual sex?”

“The type to go that far just to help a friend.”

“You’re saying you think I’m a bad friend.”

The corners of Atsumu’s eyes crinkle. “Yeah, a bit.” Kiyoomi sorely wishes he’d done a better job injecting the jibe with any trace of malice at all.

“Well,” he says, because he’s the one who’s opened up this entire confusion and he’ll be damned before he does anything in halves, whether said thing is ‘helping a friend’ or breaking himself, “looks like you were wrong, then.”

Atsumu sucks in a tiny breath between his teeth and holds it. Kiyoomi blinks at him woodenly. Counts to three. Carefully leans over to put his drink on the coffee table, safely out of arms’ reach. So much for ‘drinking together’: neither of them have made it past their first glass.

(Kiyoomi may or may not have seen that part coming, too.)

A perplexing little sound escapes the back of Atsumu’s throat – mostly a startled laugh, partly a noise of disbelief – and then in a split second he’s pushing his own glass aside and reaching for Kiyoomi and clambering onto his lap, tilting up his chin with one finger, kissing him, _kissing him_.

Every molecule of oxygen in the room ignites. Kiyoomi gasps for air. Atsumu breathes it into him.

His tongue is hot, licking past Kiyoomi’s lips unfalteringly, the bittersweet pang of his comparative experience stitched into every confident nip and swipe. He has both his hands on Kiyoomi’s face, tingles skipping across his skin where they touch. Kiyoomi’s legs are going numb – but he lets Atsumu stay straddling him anyway – lets him crowd them both closer against the sofa, too.

Atsumu pulls away from his mouth, though his hands don’t leave Kiyoomi’s face. Kiyoomi stares at him a little dazedly. Rosy splotches dust the tops of Atsumu’s cheeks, and he’s breathing a little hard, chest rising and falling under the sheer cotton of his T-shirt.

“I’d be lyin’ if I said I’d never thought about this before,” he admits.

It takes a second to register. Even then, it doesn’t really. “…Hm?”

The very end of Atsumu’s lips – kiss-bitten, shiny – quirks up into a smile. “You’re sorta pretty, I guess.” He leans back down and starts nibbling at Kiyoomi’s neck. Mumbles against his skin, “I like lookin’ at your face.”

Ah _._

Just ‘like’, this time.

Guess he doesn’t throw the word around for _everything_ then.

Closing his eyes, yanking back deep into his chest the pathetic little burst of self-pity that threatens to rear its head now of all times, Kiyoomi angles his neck to open it up for Atsumu’s wandering path of kisses. He’s vaguely aware that Atsumu’s sucking hard enough to leave bruises – wonders whether they’ll be shallow enough to fade by the time they next train with everyone – hates that he momentarily hopes they won’t be. He opens his eyes and inadvertently glances at Atsumu’s discarded whiskey on the floor.

And then – without warning – Atsumu’s suddenly winding his arms past Kiyoomi’s head to brace himself against the edge of the sofa and rocking down, with unhurried forcefulness, into his lap.

Kiyoomi swallows down a moan. Atsumu says, unevenly, “No, _don’t_ – Omi – let me listen to you—”

 _That_ tugs the muffled sound straight out of him, brutally, low and throaty and conspicuously rough. Atsumu doesn’t even give him a chance to feel embarrassed about it, chasing away the self-consciousness before it starts trickling in, filling that space instead with his relentless rocking – with his own sharp panting, feverish against Kiyoomi’s earlobe. There’s a thin sheen of sweat gathering at the crook of his neck. Kiyoomi bends to lick at it, and Atsumu gasps, the sound fractured.

“Will you fuck me?” he says in a rush, directly into Kiyoomi’s ear. “Is that – okay? It’s okay if it’s not, we can keep—”

“The drawer next to the couch,” Kiyoomi says, before his rationality can catch up to him and make him say the right words instead. “Can you reach—?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can. I’ll—” Atsumu shifts against him and Kiyoomi’s toes curl at the shiver of pleasure it stirs in his groin. He hears the drawer open, Atsumu scrabbling around, things being fished out. The crinkle of a condom wrapper. The hollow thud of a half-empty bottle of lube.

Atsumu looks at him with his hand still in the drawer and laughs, eyes bright. “Guess I was wrong about the casual sex bit, too.”

“Yes, well, you’re right about very few things, so,” says Kiyoomi. He’s rewarded with another agonising laugh.

Sex with him is equally agonising, just as good as Kiyoomi had feared it would be. Atsumu sinks into the sofa with surprising obligingness, his hair plastered to his sweaty forehead, his arms bent above his head to clutch at the armrest. He of course takes Kiyoomi’s cock with the same hubristic assertiveness he does _everything_ with, fixing Kiyoomi with glittering eyes and a teasing smirk even as he’s being all but rammed into the plush polyester – even as the rhythm of his breath becomes increasingly unsteady and his back starts arching off the couch. Kiyoomi fights the urge to commit his lines and shapes and shadows to memory. Traces over them blindly with his hands instead.

When Atsumu’s panting takes on a telltale stutter and his fingers start digging deeper into the armrest, Kiyoomi closes his eyes altogether – can’t bear to watch him stumble over the edge – the broken “god, _Omi_ ” that he has to hear is devastating enough as it is. He comes almost immediately after, shuddering all over as Atsumu whimpers through his aftershocks, and when he gingerly pulls out his legs almost give out completely from beneath him with how boneless they feel. He takes a second to balance himself and tries to clear the euphoric fog crowding his brain.

Atsumu stays sprawled on the couch, watching him throw away the condom and put the lube back into the drawer with his fingers loosely intertwined on his bare stomach. Kiyoomi very resolutely does not look at him. The silence that settles between them might be benevolent still, but he has no idea how long that’ll actually last.

“You gonna shower first?” says Atsumu eventually.

Kiyoomi picks his clothes up off the floor and drapes them over one arm. “If you don’t mind.”

“Mm. I don’t mind.” He sounds amused. “It’s your place, y’know.”

 _Don’t remind me_ , Kiyoomi wants to tell him, desperately, _don’t remind me that this space will never be just mine again._

He might throw out the sofa. He’ll definitely throw out the whiskey glasses.

“Hey, Omi.”

The beginning of the end, Kiyoomi recognises with a rush of trepidation, his shoulders tensing against his will. But Atsumu either doesn’t notice it, or doesn’t care.

“I’m not sure I’m _fully_ over it yet,” he muses out loud.

(Don’t say it. Don’t say it, because I won’t be able to refuse. You don’t know what you’re doing, Miya Atsumu, you think you do but you _never_ know what you’re doing, you never ever know what you’re getting yourself into – not that it matters because you plunge yourself into it headfirst anyway – and that, that’s precisely why I can’t take my godforsaken _eyes_ off of you.)

Atsumu grins at him; a punch he doesn’t even realise he’s thrown. “Wanna help me tomorrow, too?”

He’s encased in a thin line of gold from the lamp still on in the far corner. His hair’s still tousled into damp spikes matted against his forehead. He looks far too comfortable stretched out naked on Kiyoomi’s sofa, his entire frame totally relaxed, like he’s spent his whole life there, like he could maybe spend the rest of it there without complaint. Kiyoomi’s body thrums with the rampant need to keep him.

He exhales, then steps away to head for the shower. “Maybe,” he says when he’s got one foot in the bathroom doorway, but they both know it means _definitely_ , and Kiyoomi knows that it even means _whenever you want_.

He’d seen this all coming. The fall, the catch. And he sees the inevitable crash course they’re on, too, could predict it down to the very minute if he tried, could describe exactly how it’ll happen. He knows. He _knows_. He’s prepared himself for this, and for how he’s going to carefully steer away from it.

So why is every last ounce of certainty crumbling away at his feet now?

He can pretend to phrase it like a question but it’s one he already knows the answer to. It’s a reality that won’t change, no matter how hard he tries to slough it off his skin under the dash of his painfully hot shower – no matter how quickly he replaces the sofa in the living room – no matter how long he _actively tries_ to change it. He’s especially sure of that last one, because he’s only been trying in vain to dismantle this reality since his second year of high school.

Put simply: Miya Atsumu is too easy to love.

He is violently, mercilessly, messily easy to love. He is someone you love indignantly – resentfully – all the while knowing that you’re signing up to your own undoing. You resign yourself to it. You are helpless in the face of it.

“Put the whiskey glasses in the sink if you’re done with yours,” Kiyoomi says without turning around, because he’s always been someone doomed to understand himself a little too well. “I’ll wash them when I’m out of the shower.”

He hears Atsumu get up off the sofa. “Oh, I can wash ’em for you.”

No. Don’t. You’ll break them.

“Thank you,” he says, and then closes the bathroom door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> this is intended to work as a standalone, but it will also be part 1 of my very first series, if you are at all interested in following how these idiots work this one out 😌 pls also feel free to punch me in the comments, if you are more interested in that.
> 
> ( i'm em ! i'm also [here](https://twitter.com/emsby4) !!)


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